The Bolivian government Wednesday announced the arrest of a man reputed to be one of that nation's two major cocaine traffickers. Juan Carlos Lisboa Melgar, 35, was arrested Tuesday during a raid on a home in Santa Cruz, a drug-trafficking center 335 miles southeast of La Paz, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gonzalo Torrico said. He said Lisboa, who did not resist arrest, owns the biggest cocaine-processing laboratory ever uncovered in Bolivia. He said it can produce up to 8,800 pounds a week.

In their single biggest victory in the drug war, Colombian police Friday shot and killed notorious narcotics trafficker Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, who as a leader of the Medellin cartel waged a campaign of terror to maintain the world's biggest cocaine empire.

The government has returned 100 planes seized during a 6-week-old crackdown on drug traffickers, a Bogota daily said today. The planes were part of 375 aircraft confiscated since Aug. 19 when President Virgilio Barco Vargas ordered government security forces to hunt down suspected traffickers and seize their property. The National Drug Council decided that 180 of the aircraft had been used in drug trafficking and turned the planes over to the Colombian air force, the daily El Tiempo said.

President Ernesto Samper has raised the stakes in the nation's drug war by calling for an end to the constitutional ban on the extradition of cocaine traffickers and other criminals. The move, which could clear the way for jailed Cali cartel traffickers to be put on trial in the United States, must still be approved by Congress. Analysts say the issue is certain to be the subject of heated debate. U.S.

El Salvador's national police chief stepped down after local media reports accused two close advisors of corruption and links to drug traffickers. Two aides to Francisco Rovira resigned Friday after news media reports said one ran a private consulting firm with suspected drug traffickers as clients and the other used police license plates without authorization. "This morning, [Rovira] told me he wanted an open and transparent investigation and that's why I accepted his resignation," President Tony Saca said at a news conference.

The Interior Ministry fired 427 agents and 19 state commanders of its secret police force following a drug trafficking investigation prompted by the murder of a U.S. narcotics agent. The ministry said the arrests of drug traffickers Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca, who are charged with the February kidnaping and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar, prompted the investigation of the Federal Security Directorate.

Mexican businessman Ruben Zuno Arce was sentenced Wednesday to two life terms for his role in the 1985 kidnaping and murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena. In December, Zuno, the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, was convicted in Los Angeles federal court of conspiring to kidnap a federal agent, kidnaping a federal agent, conspiring to commit violent crimes in aid of racketeering and committing violent crimes in aid of racketeering. Calling Camarena's torture-murder "an enormously heinous crime," U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie sentenced Zuno to life terms on both of the kidnaping counts and to 10-year terms on both racketeering counts.

With a stucco mansion in the hills outside San Juan and four luxury cars, including a Corvette, Wilfredo Rodriguez lived well for a part-time worker on an airport ground crew. U.S. prosecutors say Rodriguez, who wrapped cargo in plastic for American Airlines, built his fortune over the last decade by smuggling drugs aboard commercial flights -- one small slice of the hundreds of tons of South American cocaine that flow through Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland each year. His arrest last month highlights the challenges for law enforcement authorities on this U.S. Caribbean territory, as traffickers flood the island with drug money and make it one of the most violent places under the American flag.

Two suspected Mexican drug traffickers were killed Monday when their U.S.-registered light plane exploded in mid-air in Colombia's northern department of Cordoba, police said. They quoted peasants as saying the plane burst into flames as it approached a clandestine jungle airstrip.